Rev. Erudite Redneck, B.S., B.S., M.A., M.Div.

Basic tenants of Judaism: 1) The First Commandment -- Thou shalf have no other gods before me;
2) The "Shma" prayer, redcited several times a day and repeated often in the prayer books and Talmud -- "Hear Oh Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One"

(All else in Psalms, songs, metaphors, analogies, stories to be intrepreted with that one basic conept in mind)
 

Of course. God is the Most High god. The MOST HIGH god.

Why was there a need for a commandment not to put any other god before God if there were no other gods?

We tend to ready that commandment as a literary reference -- an admonition not to put wealth, or another person, or a career or what have you, before God.

But what it says is put no "other gods" before me.

Hmmm.
 

Actually got a post in the works on the same subject. Well nearly. Since it's been 2 years since I've looked at my thesis. i am getting it out again and re-looking at the Baal-Yam- Mot-YHWH-Leviathan whatever combat battles. There is some good ugaritic stuff to re-investigate.

Ps 29 is what inspired me to put first pen to paper on writing my thesis!! It is one of my favorite Psalms.

And I believe totally there were other gods. Some really cool ones too. It is like a comic book really (and no one better steal my idea before I get it published either.hahaha)
 

Re, "And I believe totally there were other gods."

Do you mean you believe the Jews believed there were other gods? Or do you mean you believe there were other gods but that God became Most High God by kicking the others' butts?

I tend to believe that while God, the Most High, might not have changed -- although I don't know why God wouldn't -- that humankind's IDEAS have changed drastically in the attempt to comprehend the uncomprehendable.
 

"No other Gods before me"

I think the children of Isreal before Moses and the Exodus most certainly had additional gods.

The golden calf that Aaron made when Moses was on the mountain comes to mind.

I also think that the heavenly beings, like angels, could be given godlike attributes, with a God the King in the name of Yahweh.
 

But the golden calf was an idol. Man-made. A false, non-God. According to Scripture, anyway.

Now, an angel: I might very well mistake Gabriel for God if he popped up.
 

Real god vs not real god.

Who is to say? If an image of a god (idol) is worshipped, to the worshippers that god is real. You are asking two different questions. The first is are there other gods? The second, did the Israelites have other gods. In answer to the second, yes, most certainly. The question becomes are they real?

I don’t know if I could tell a difference between an angel with supernatural powers vs. a one true God. I guess a question becomes what is the definition of a god?

I also do not think the first commandment was intended to say don’t put wealth in front of God, I think it was intended to say don’t put other Gods in front of me. After the years in Egypt, they would have been exposed to a whole pantheon that would have been very different from a single God. As I understand it, it wasn’t until Moses saw the burning bush, did he even consider a single god. I think it was Jethro that actually helped him through the conversion.
 

The Divine Throneroom appears in the call narrative of Isaiah, and in the prologue to the Book of Job as well. The angels were, initially perhaps, incorporated as royal emissaries - since the word itself means "messenger" this shouldn't be too surprising. Just as foreign gods were often translated to hell and appear now as demons - Asathoth, Baal, even Ishtar - the decision as to who ended up where may just have been based on the source; a conquered people's god may have become a Divine retainer; those of a perpetual enemy or conqueror may have ended up a demon.

The ancient Israelites were immersed in a polytheistic and pantheistic world; theirs was most definitely their God, but they had the temerity to grant Divinity to the gods of others. Only after repeated defeats, exile, and living as a vassal state of Greece, Egypt, and Rome did the singularity of the God of the Jews become important.

The "Shema Y'israel" is a moving statement, and there is no corollary in Christianity. Even Islam has "There is no Gog but God and Mohammed is his prophet". The closest I imagine is "God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself", from 2 Corinthians.

Incidentally, it is assumed by scholars (although personally I don't agree with the theory) that the veneration of the saints was a syncretistic move by the early and Dark Age Church to accommodate the pantheons of non-Christian peoples. I think it was generally more complex than that; as the Church was already quite widespread and the saints and their various "Acts" were popular even before the Constantinian declaration making the Church the official religion of the Empire, I think more was going on here.

One final note. The earliest mention of "Satan" is found in Job, composed initially in the 7th or 8th century BCE, with the prologue added somewhat later. In this appearance, Satan is a member of the Divine Court, as a lawyer. He is, in the Hebrew, literally, "the Accuser" (it is thought that confrontational legal practices in early Israel and Judah included one such, the equivalent, with variances, of a prosecutor; he is not the Prince of Darkness, with horns, cloven hooves, and tail, but one among many members of the court).

One last thing (really!). A few years ago, I saw a documentary in which archaeologists showed and discussed some semi-cuneiform rock carvings in the western Sinai, which were prayers to a God named "El". As one of the non-Divine names of the God of Israel is "Elohim" (I think that is Lord Almighty, but I may be wrong), it is certainly evidence that at least a cognate of what would become the God of Israel was worshiped among non-Egyptian workers in Egypt.
 

First, all the talk of gods and God leads me to think of the Hindu concept Brahman.

Second, GKS's mention of Job reminded me of the Heinlein book of that name. Any of y'all read it? Seem to remember it portraying multiple worlds with multiple god, over which there is another, higher being.
 

I've always wondered about this whole "other gods" thing.

I always figured it was just the way we talk about competing gods. We do still call the gods of other religions "gods" even if we don't believe they actually are. How does one talk about the Hindu gods, for example, without calling them gods?

Language is hard.
 

GKS even though Constantine made Christianity the official Roman religion, he still allowed all other pagan and etc. Gods to be worshiped. In fact he was a worshiper of Sol Invictus until he accepted Christianity on his death bed. Theodosius the 1st was the first Roman Emperor to Outlaw all other Religions on pain of death, and allowed the Ionoclast to rip through the Empire smashing idols and burning books that were not Christian. It became a Word versus Image war, a Christian versus everybody war but the Christian now had the army. Thus it was safer to convert Isis to Mary than worship Isis.

Of course there were other gods in the Hebrew culture. Time and time again the prophets and writers of the old testament mention them and rail against them.
There was even a 400 year long period when multiple gods, along with their temple prostitues etc. were worshiped in the Temple at Jerusalem. The god that gave Jehovah the biggest fit was actually a little Canaanite goddess, Asheroth, she appeared on the Hebrew table every Friday evening in the form of a loaf of bread formed in her shape and thus she became syncretistic with the Hebrew female concept of the Sabbath.
Archaeologist in fact can judge whether a site is Hebrew or not by whether they find the little clay statues of Asheroth at the site or not.

The clew to why some this was going on is found in the fact that the Hebrews married "foriegn women" and then wouldn't let them worship in the Hebrew temples. So they simply imported their old goddesses from their former cultures, passed them down mother to daughter and lived a seperate religious life independent from the men in the household in many instances.
Want to see more, look up the number of times those "holy groves" or "poles" of Ashera or Asheroth are mentioned in the Bible.

There is a lot more if you want it.
 

Kristen said: "First, all the talk of gods and God leads me to think of the Hindu concept Brahman."

Good point, and GKS re: our Trinity discussion before, the Trinity composing Brahman is an another example that the concept was not unique.

Brahma, Vishnu and Siva constitued the trinity of Hinduism. They are aspects of Brahman, the highest God of Hinduism. (When Brahman is manifested he has another name)
 

ER,

I purposefully phrased my answer so as not to have to answer that.

But if you are asking, I do not beleive in process theism.

But what we have, in the way of conceptualizing God, before Abraham, is a bit fuzzy. We simply do not know. But I do not think there were tons of gods who got meshed into ONE by the Jews. I can't prove it. Don;t intend to. I just see a lot of problems with the evolution of religion theory. Why couldn't God always be one. Why did he have to be many then one?
 

Sorry, Pech.

Never heard of process theism.

Note: I am talking about changes in human concepts of God, NOT changes in God.

As I said, I don't know why God couldn't change, since all living things change -- but then you bump against the Godness of God, who CREATED life itself. I'm not saying I believe that; I haven't thought about it that much.

I really like that Tillich quote DrLobo has tossed out a couple of times lately.
 

Re, "I'm not saying I believe that; I haven't thought about it that much."

I'm meant that I wasn't saying that I believe God changes; and I meant that I hadn't thought about THAT that much. :-)
 

Pechur is basically correct, God or the Goddess usually starts out as one, The One, Unity, the dot on the diagram, they/it/he/she are unknowable, ineffable, most are unapproachable, thus the the sub-Gods, closer to earth, closer to people, accessible.

As for El, he was a monolithic God.
Actually he was a "One Rock" God.

When the "Priestly (P)" text of Genesis first chapter speaks of El it uses the plural form. Plural meaning: El the daddy with Mrs. El and kids, thus Elohim (the family of El), thus "Let us..." Make he and she in our image..."

The Chapter Two jumps to the "Jehovah" (J) version single unit God.
 

Yes, we change, God does not change, well if he did we wouldn't know it because unknowable is by definition unknowable. But we can say with certainty any human view of God will change within the individual , culture, relgion, or any other grouping made up on homo sapiens. GARANTEEDED.
I mean for some reason for the last 35,000 years at least, homo sapiens has thought there was a God or Goddess. Compare the Willendorf Goddess to Christ on the cross. Not quite the same image.
 

ER, think of "process theism" as the "Lysenkoism" of theology.
 

Uh ... do what?
 

Well the Hebrews did a lot of "falling away". Jehovah therefore had to do a lot god bashing. An example:

2 Kings 23
"1 Then the king called together all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem. 2 He went up to the temple of the LORD with the men of Judah...
4 The king ordered Hilkiah the high priest, the priests next in rank and the doorkeepers to remove from the temple of the LORD all the articles made for Baal and Asherah and all the starry hosts. He burned them outside Jerusalem in the fields of the Kidron Valley and took the ashes to Bethel. 5 He did away with the pagan priests appointed by the kings of Judah to burn incense on the high places of the towns of Judah and on those around Jerusalem—those who burned incense to Baal, to the sun and moon, to the constellations and to all the starry hosts. 6 He took the Asherah pole from the temple of the LORD to the Kidron Valley outside Jerusalem and burned it there. He ground it to powder and scattered the dust over the graves of the common people. 7 He also tore down the quarters of the male shrine prostitutes, which were in the temple of the LORD and where women did weaving for Asherah.
8 Josiah brought all the priests from the towns of Judah and desecrated the high places, from Geba to Beersheba, where the priests had burned incense. He broke down the shrines [a] at the gates—at the entrance to the Gate of Joshua, the city governor, which is on the left of the city gate. 9 Although the priests of the high places did not serve at the altar of the LORD in Jerusalem, they ate unleavened bread with their fellow priests.
10 He desecrated Topheth, which was in the Valley of Ben Hinnom, so no one could use it to sacrifice his son or daughter in [b] the fire to Molech. 11 He removed from the entrance to the temple of the LORD the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun. They were in the court near the room of an official named Nathan-Melech. Josiah then burned the chariots dedicated to the sun.
12 He pulled down the altars the kings of Judah had erected on the roof near the upper room of Ahaz, and the altars Manasseh had built in the two courts of the temple of the LORD. He removed them from there, smashed them to pieces and threw the rubble into the Kidron Valley. 13 The king also desecrated the high places that were east of Jerusalem on the south of the Hill of Corruption—the ones Solomon king of Israel had built for Ashtoreth the vile goddess of the Sidonians, for Chemosh the vile god of Moab, and for Molech [c] the detestable god of the people of Ammon. 14 Josiah smashed the sacred stones and cut down the Asherah poles and covered the sites with human bones. "
 

That explains the First Commandment, then. Whether they were real lesser deities or imagined gods, there was a whole lot of having of gods before God to deal with.

That, coupled with various and sundry panthea, might very well have had the earliest Christians better wired for the Trinity than we are today, since it's been beaten into our heads since we were little that our faith is, and has always been monotheistic. Looks like one can be polytheistic and still believe in one Most High God.
 

BTW, I am HURT that no one has acknowledged my astoundingly clever puns and plays on words in the multi-deck head on this post! LOL

I especially amn fond of "Angels -- We have herds on high" -- wocka wocka.

Back to the cigar porch ...
 

OKay...after that comic interlude (I did notice those puns by the way they inspired me to the cow stuff)...Point two:

Why did Jehovah win out over that dozen or so Gods whose ass he kick out of the Temple and across Hebrewland in the above comment?

READ: 2 Kings 22:
"8 Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the secretary, "I have found the Book of the Law in the temple of the LORD." He gave it to Shaphan, who read it. 9 Then Shaphan the secretary went to the king and reported to him: "Your officials have paid out the money that was in the temple of the LORD and have entrusted it to the workers and supervisors at the temple." 10 Then Shaphan the secretary informed the king, "Hilkiah the priest has given me a book." And Shaphan read from it in the presence of the king.
11 When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law, he tore his robes. 12 He gave these orders to Hilkiah the priest, Ahikam son of Shaphan, Acbor son of Micaiah, Shaphan the secretary and Asaiah the king's attendant: 13 "Go and inquire of the LORD for me and for the people and for all Judah about what is written in this book that has been found. Great is the LORD's anger that burns against us because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book; they have not acted in accordance with all that is written there concerning us."

So the are renovating the Temple in Jerusalem and down in the basement they found a written covenant that expands on Moses etc.. Whoops, it has been down there gathering dust, a book inspired by God, written by, er written by....who?... mind you lost in the basement of his own Temple....and the head priest just happen to find it and....

What did Jehovah have the others did not...scribes...the written word...the Book...The book+The God equals monoGod...The Book, he had, the Book. No wonder the Fundamentalist worship it. It is the source of the power of Jehovah in the temporal world.
 

Whoa. And so we can credit Gutenburg with the spread of fundamentalism. Which brings ME back, anyway, to my complaint that literacy is to blame for the relative stagnation of thinking.

Dude. It's damn close to: "I didn't know I was nekkid until somebody handed me clothes."

Or, more to the point: I didn't know I was sinful until showed me the Law! (Isn't that Pauline?)

I see why people get so deep into this that they abandon all faith in God. ... It just reaffirms my decision to jump out into the ether and say GOD SAVE ME.

But then: I once -- and sadly, only once -- have looked into the past, looked into deep space, by way of an array of telescopes set up outside Albany, Texas, by the Fort Worth (TX) Astronomy Club. They brought their big guns.

I was humled. I came away with my faith strenghthened! How come can come away from same with theor faith dashed, I just don't get.

And that might be a non sequitur.
 

Good grief! Anonymous has posted the only comment worthy of serious consideration! Everyone else HAS forgotten, and IS forgotten. Does HE know ANYONE here!?

Well, I'm not even going to sully the soles of my shoes any further on this one.

Hope this discussion makes you all feel good.
 

Oh, good.

What in heaven's name has offended you, EL? Most of it's questions and admissions of lcak of comprehension. Is that a sin where you come from? Sheesh.
 

So yes, back on a previous post remember we did that, I was touting Gutenburg as a major contributor to the success of Calvin and Luther's Reformation.

Ever notice that elashley's short name EL is the same as God's?

Well ER you've managed to place yourself in the Golden Mean by insulting everybody on the Orthodox and Antitheist sides of the spectrum.
 

"Lysenkoism"

http://skepdic.com/lysenko.html


"Process theism"
http://plato.stanford.edu/
entries/process-theism/

DrLobo: So, how is process theism the Lysenkoism of theology? I sort of see some commonalities, but then I'm looking for them since you made the connection.

And, why, look at the time!

In a dark night of the soul, it's always 3 o'clock in the morning ...
 

Speaking of Angels...
Maybe it should be, "Angels we have heard while high."

Which calls to mind the scene of the angle materializing from the ceiling in the HBO show "Angels in America." Now if that happened to me... well a lot of my generation have experienced a number of heavenly pharmaceutical events like that.

Process theology and lysenkoism, get the cause and effect somewhat reversed. The cart pushes the pony.
Or maybe not, any way, now you know what lysenkoism and process theology are, cause you looked them up.

In some ways, that's what the orthodox do, push the pony with the cart. If you start out with the premise that "the Lord is One" and that is the one and only immutable truth which can not be altered, then when you read "Anything" in the Bible it has to support that truth no matter what the words actually say.
Thus we twist and turn and weave our minds into convoluted postures in order to make it all fit. Then we write millions of words and hundreds of thousands of books about the proper positions for the thought contortions necessary to achieve continuity of The Truth and read these books to one another in Sunday School, and from the pulpit.
But they never quite ring true so we avidly await the next Christian guru, hoping against hope that he has a magic way to make it all work together this time. I can fill a library with such books purchased at any thrift store where they have been discarded.

Of course, then there are some who listen to the still small voice, or can see that inner light, and don't mistake the treasure maps for the treasure itself.

Whoops, can't keep from lecturing or trying to teach. Arrogant is it not? (now there's an opening).
 

Angels in America
Making of a Prophet....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQ64IPINlj0
 

LOL

If you haven't seen it, rent it.

But be aware that this is NOT "Touched by an Angel." Um... well, OK, it is ... kinda.
 

ER,

Sorry for bringing up process theism. =(

By now you don't need me to explain it. However, in order to try to be a little more precise in what I was trying to say. I define PT as a system of belief that states that God has and does change. He could have been other than he is now and maybe other than he will be in the future.

However, it probably doesn't matter in the whole scheme of things.

But what you said in response to my comment is where we both are."
Note: I am talking about changes in human concepts of God, NOT changes in God.